Ah, video delivery on the web used to be so simple. A developer would easily build or license a Flash player and be serving up videos on his or her site within a few hours. Yes, I know... Flash is proprietary technology, but life was good: not much thought went into video codecs or browser support. Flash could handle virtually any codec, and its worldwide penetration statistics consistently hovered somewhere in the 98.5-99.5% range.

Enter the iPhone, and Apple’s conscious (and some might say “spiteful”) decision to prevent Flash playback and push HTML5 as the preferred video delivery mechanism. Apple cited chronic performance issues with the Flash platform and a desire to encourage adoption of web standards as the primary reasons for their move, but the cynic in me believes that greed also played a pretty big role. For instance, at the time of the iPhone's launch, over 70% of online games were built using Flash. Apple saw gaming as a huge part of mobile device usage (and by proxy, its App Store), so it made a lot of sense for them to force developers into building apps rather than allow them to continue working in Flash. After all, the App Store is the only legal way to download an app to your phone, and Apple does enjoy a 30% cut of every sale.

Regardless of the motive, Apple’s decision put developers in a bind, and they have been slow to adapt. Three years after the release of the original iPhone, only 10% of all online videos were available through HTML5. Today, a slim majority of online videos are available through HTML5, but it has been a long, slow climb.

So why the slow adoption rates for HTML5 video? There are several reasons, but the biggest one is browser compatibility. While the HTML5 specification provides directives on how video playback is achieved, it does not define how video should be encoded. Therefore, each browser is free to choose which codecs to support, and of course, there is unfortunately no single codec that is supported across the board. Further, not all of the browsers which support HTML5 video support all of its features!

Referencing the chart above, it’s easy to see that to provide the best experience possible to our end users, it’s necessary to prepare video using two codecs (H.264 and WebM) and support and maintain two video players (HTML5 and Flash).

Video is the lifeblood of our sister company, how2heroes, so we’re in the process of attacking these issues head-on. The challenge is to keep up with advancements in technology while supporting as many of our users as we possibly can. All 2000+ videos on how2heroes.com were originally encoded using H.264, which for years has been as close to “standard” as exists in the video codec space. To re-encode everything using WebM would be a massive undertaking, so we’ve decided to take a phased approach.

In March, 2010, we provided a no-frills HTML5 video player which was used exclusively as a fallback for our users who didn’t have Flash. Today, we’re slowly starting to roll out a new HTML5 player to all browsers that support the H.264 codec. And for the other 56% of our users, we’ll be supporting and maintaining our Flash player indefinitely.

The good news is that our initial testing has indicated that our new HTML5 player is performing very well. Video playback is smoother, and the player takes up less system resources than its Flash counterpart. So, regardless of all the trouble HTML5 video is causing, it’s comforting knowing that the effort will be going towards providing a better experience for our users.

If you're running Chrome, Safari, or Internet Explorer 9, why not give our new video player a try, and let us what you think! 

Winter in New England means never wanting to take your gloves off when you're outside. But duty calls and touchscreens don't work with gloves on so you can't do what you need to do on your smartphone or hit the ATM with your gloves on. And those mittens with the cut-off fingers, well, they're just downright drafty. But now there's a solution! We recently discoverd there are touchscreen friendly gloves and we took them on a test drive in the great (freezing) outdoors.

Watch the video to see if they have the magic touch or not. 

To make your own gloves, touchscreen friendly, check out the advice from our friends at Lifehacker. 

2011 was a banner year for smartphone apps. You don’t need to throw Alec Baldwin off a flight to know that Words With Friends is extremely addictive, and I know as many grandmothers obsessed with Angry Birds as I do 8 year olds.

You may have heard that Apple recently announced that more than 500,000 apps are available at its App Store, and that customers are continuing to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

That’s a lot of apps.

While you probably don’t have room on your phone for all of them, we were talking about our favorites in the office the other day.

One of my new favorites is called Photosynth. It’s a free app that allows you to use your smartphone to take 360° photos of your surroundings! It’s amazingly easy and fun to use. Check out some examples on their site.

Hey look! It's the International Space Station! Underneath the couch!

Another cool app is called SkyView. It has free and paid versions (I have the free one). It blends the camera view of your smartphone with incredible 3D graphics of sky objects to provide a really cool view of the universe. You can take it out at night to find out more about the stars above you, or use it during the day to figure out where exactly the moon is at any given time. The paid option apparently gives you TONS more information about particular stars and planets, so I’ll probably upgrade before too long.

I asked some folks here in the office to tell me about their favorite apps, regardless of whether or not they were released this year. Feel free to check them out below, and then add your favorite in the comments section!
 

Lynne Viera, CEO:

Glympse
A friend who was coming for dinner introduced me to this app. It’s a great way of allowing someone to keep track of your travel progress. You basically text or email someone with a “glympse” of where you are located. Recipient clicks on the link and lo and behold, there’s a map with an arrow that shows you EXACTLY where the person is. No need to download a special app or anything. I was able to see her travel from her house to mine which gave me a good sense of how long I had to finish what I was doing and greet her outside when she pulled up.

Very cool and I can see great applications of this for keeping my company posted on where I am if I’m off-site, parents keeping track of their kids walking home from school, etc.

Amber Wilkins, Sr. Art Director:

This one is my favorite: Snapseed.  

Snapseed turns the iPad into a high-powered photo editing and post-processing workstation—it’s like Photoshop but easier! Whether you’re an amateur or pro, Snapseed helps your photos look better though many filters and features.

Carolyn Waldron-Parr, Videographer & Editor:

My favorite app is the iHandy flashlight app. The iHandy flashlight app uses your phone camera’s LED flash as a flashlight. Use this app in the dark—duh. It’s wicked cheap, wicked cool, and wicked bright.

Andrew Zubatkin, Sr. Videographer: 

Zombie, Run! is one hell of a game you can plan on your smartphone. It allows you to create your own Zombie Apocalypse and then try to survive said event! You’re gonna need to run fast because once they see you, they won’t stop coming after you. Ever.

Jason Bacon, Director of Photography:

I really love this one: Shake it.

It takes digital photos and gives them that old-school Polaroid look, complete with the “shaking” process to help the “developing.” You can choose the border and immediately post the photos to Facebook, Twitter, email... It’s great fun!

So tell us—what was your favorite app of 2011?